The U.S. Supreme Court appeared fairly skeptical of President Trump’s implementation of numerous “emergency” tariffs in a pair of key cases before the bench on Wednesday.
The nation’s highest court held oral arguments in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump and Trump v. V.O.S. Selections, Inc. The cases center around the legality of Trump’s implementation of tariffs using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which grants presidents the power to “deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States, if the President declares a national emergency with respect to such threat.”
As The Federalist previously described, the president “did so in response to existing ‘unfair trade practices’ that lead to trade deficits, as well as to punish countries like China for failing to ‘blunt the sustained influx of synthetic opioids, including fentanyl, flowing from the [People’s Republic of China] to the United States.’” Invoking language contained in IEEPA, Trump reasoned that these problems represent an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the country.